


Particularly Pretty

by lesbianophelia (orphan_account)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Melancholy, Post-Canon, Pre-Epilogue Mockingjay, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:13:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24613579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/lesbianophelia
Summary: Post Mockingjay.Katniss doesn't believe Peeta when he tells her that she's pretty.(Repost. Originally uploaded fall 2019)
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 17
Kudos: 148





	Particularly Pretty

“You’re so pretty,” the baker says to the Mockingjay. 

Only, they aren’t those things anymore. The boy bakes, but out of his kitchen. The mockingjay sings, but not the songs of battle she was forced to echo. The people who used them as pawns in a game have no use for them. They’ve been shuffled off back to District Twelve, far out of sight of anybody who might have their illusions shattered to see the boy and girl on fire, completely burned out. 

The boy doesn’t have to be here. The girl knows that. He hasn’t admitted it, yet, that he came back for her. But the first thing he did was plant flowers for her sister and --   
  
The girl can’t think about that right now. Can’t lose another day to her grief.   
  
“Stop,” she says instead. Not the giggling, blushing, _don’t really stop_ teasing that she heard girls at school say, a lifetime ago. It’s flat and harsh and jagged around the edges. The way she is.   
  
“No way,” the boy says, his hands gliding over her calves. “You are.”   
  
She’s heard him lie so many times before. Almost never to her. Her heart thumps wildly, angrily in her ears.   
  
“Stop,” she says again.   
  
“But--” the boy starts, and she pulls her legs in, tucks the blanket around herself.   
  
“I don’t want to do this,” she says. She liked it much more when they didn’t talk. When they didn’t lie.   
  
His blue eyes search hers, but she doesn’t know what he was looking for. The part of her that itches to fly out the door right now and hide in the woods for a few days hopes he doesn’t find it. Hopes he would stop looking.   
  
He lays back against his pillow and stares at her more, in the dark. Closer to her, this time. “Did I do something wrong?” he asks, very softly. “Is . . . is it not okay? To tell you what I think about you?”   
  
“You can tell you what you think about me,” the girl says, sitting up and pulling a sweater over herself. She’s still in her nightgown. Her legs are still on display in front of him. Mottled skin, boniness and all. “When you’re telling the truth.”   
  
“Katniss,” he starts.   
  
“It’s fine,” she says. “I’m gonna sleep at my house tonight.”   
  
She doesn’t sleep at all. 

. . . 

“Hey,” the boy says when she comes downstairs in a new dress. Tonight, they’re going on a _date_. Her first one, somehow. Two arenas, a civil war, almost a year back in Twelve. Her very first date. “I like your dress.”   
  
She smooths her hands over the skirt. It’s a faded, floral thing. A gift from her mother, all the way from District Four. She mentioned, though she was complaining, the boy’s silly plan to act like eighteen year olds. Of course, she left out all the ways they had already been doing just that. Her mother liked it and suggested Katniss dress up for the dates, so that they might feel less like acting. 

“Is it new?” the boy asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”   
  
“It’s new,” she confirms. . 

He’s holding flowers. Wildflowers. Though he’s clearly tried to dust it away, she can still see the remnants of the dirt he must have kneeled in to pick them. “These are for you,” he says, smiling so shyly that she thinks it actually burns. “For our date.”   
  
“Okay,” she says.   
  
“Is that allowed?” he teases. “I might even ask to hold your hands later.”   
  
“What will my mother think?” the girl teases, like they don’t already live together. She grabs a glass jar from the kitchen and fills it with water, for the flowers, and tries not to focus on the way the boy is staring at her while she puts the small bouquet into the water.   
  
And then he kisses her. The kind of kiss that always promises something more. She tries to control her smile when she pulls back to stare at him. She thought they were playing a game. She didn’t expect any kisses until later tonight.   
  
“Sorry,” the boy says. “I couldn’t help myself.”   
  
“It’s okay,” she said, her cheeks flaming.   
  
“You look beautiful,” he says.   
  
She stiffens, her willingness to play along sapping out of her body. Lying to themselves is one thing. Lying to each other is another one. “Stop,” she says again. “Let’s just go, okay?”   
  
And then the date is spoiled. He reaches for her hand and she pretends not to notice the anxious way the back of his hand nudges against hers. He opens a door for her and she hurries past him so that she can open the next one. When they get home and he goes to kiss her goodnight, the way he always does, she turns her face so he catches her cheek instead. 

. . . 

“Is it because you don’t think you’re beautiful?” the baker asks the next morning, when she comes downstairs and finds what she thinks might be stress cinnamon rolls. He must have woken up early to already have these ready. “Or do you just not like it when _I_ say it?”   
  
“Does it matter, Peeta?” she asks, getting two plates out of the cabinet.   
  
“Of course it matters,” he says.   
  
She’s halfway through her first cinnamon roll before she speaks. “I don’t like being lied to,” she says.   
  
“Lucky thing I don’t lie to you, then,” says the baker, though he looks a little wounded. “Do you think I would say those things if they weren’t true?”   
  
She does. She knows he would. Because she knows how he really thinks she looks, back from before he was able to filter what he really thought. _Not very big. Or particularly pretty_.   
  
“Do you think I really think you think this is beautiful?” she counters, motioning up towards her scarred face. “Don’t patronize me, Peeta.”   
  
“Of course I really think--” he starts, but she pushes her chair away from the table, letting it scrape noisily against the floor.   
  
“I’m not very hungry.”   
  
Now they’ve both lied to each other this morning. 

. . . 

“I just wish you would give me a little credit,” he’s saying, a couple mornings later. “What would I possibly have to gain from lying about you being beautiful?”   
  
She shoots him a look that she wishes would shut him up. It doesn’t work.   
  
“Unless you think I’m lying about wanting to be with you, too,” he continues. “But if you think that’s a lie, it’s at least one you like.”   
  
“Can you stop?” she asks. “I’m letting you off the hook. Okay? You don’t -- have to say those things anymore.”   
  
“What if I want to?” he asks. “Katniss, obviously I think you’re beautiful.”   
  
_Obviously_. “You don’t,” the girl says. And then, though she’s playing her hand, she says, “I _know_ you don’t. So--”   
  
She goes to turn away, but the boy grabs her hand. Not hard enough to hurt.   
  
“You know, huh?” he asks. “Wanna tell me how?”   
  
She shakes her head.   
  
“Is it the part where I rejected your every advance when you wanted me for my body?”   
  
_Wanted me for my body._ He’s trying to make her laugh. It would work on a normal day, but not now.   
  
“Or the part where I don’t worry about you, when you disappear for hours on end, or--” he cuts himself off, clearly realizing something. She doesn’t know what, just that his grip on her hand loosens. “ _Oh_ ,” he says, and it’s weird. Choked off. Sad.   
  
“Yeah,” she says, and she hates it, that she’s playing against him again, somehow. But she feels superior. “So stop lying to me.”   
  
“I’m not!” he snaps, and then his hand comes to his mouth. Clearly, he didn’t mean to get frustrated. In his defense, she has been egging him on. “Did -- was it --?” he clears his throat. “He told you?” the boy asks. “He told you that I think--?”   
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Katniss says.   
  
“Of course it matters,” he says.   
  
She goes to turn away again and he touches her wrist again.   
  
“Don’t -- please,” he manages. “Katniss. Don’t leave me right now.”   
  
“Fine,” she says. But she can’t look at him. “Do you need to call Dr. Aurelius?”   
  
“I need --” he starts, sharp, and then closes his eyes. “Listen, I can’t . . . there’s not . . .” he starts, and then he sighs, dragging his hand through his hair. “Did he tell you that I don’t think you’re beautiful?”   
  
He. It’s easier, sometimes. Thinking of the version of him, the mutt version, as something completely different. But he wore her lover’s face, and he seemed lucid, otherwise.   
  
“I can never even start to make things right if you don’t tell me what I’ve done, Katniss,” he says, and he sounds . . . so broken. “I know -- I know I’ve said some horrible things. But -- you could just . . . tell me.”   
  
She shakes her head. “You’re right,” she says. “I shouldn’t hold a grudge. It wasn’t you. I just--”   
  
“That’s not what I said.”   
  
“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it, Peeta,” she says. “Have you thought about that?”   
  
He bites his lips together. “Okay,” he says. “That’s fine. I’ll call Delly.”   
  
“No!” she cries, and this time it’s her turn to reach for his wrist. He doesn’t stop when she touches it, though.   
  
  
He doesn’t come up to bed that night, even though it’s his own house.   
  
. . . 

She finds him in the kitchen in the morning with a little leather bound notebook in front of him. He’s so caught up in whatever he’s writing that he doesn’t even hear her approach. She steals his coffee cup, half empty and half cold already. Before the sun is even up.   
  
He snaps the notebook shut before she can read any over his shoulder.   
  
“Good morning,” she says, though it’s obvious from the dark circles under his eyes that he hasn’t slept at all.   
  
“Hey,” he manages. “I was drinking that.”   
  
She shrugs, staring down at the cup of coffee. It isn’t even good, but she drinks out of his mug all the time. Usually, he doesn’t mind. He takes it back, though he doesn’t seem angry with her. He seems sad. She wants to slide into the seat beside him and stroke his hair. She sits across from him, instead.   
  
“Did you have an episode?” she asks. 

He shakes his head.   
  
“Have you called Dr. Aurelius?”   
  
Another shake of his head.   
  
“How long are we going to fight about this?” she asks.   
  
“No one’s fighting, Katniss,” he says. And he sounds so very sad. She reaches across the table and covers his hand with hers. “I understand why you couldn’t tell me. I have . . .” he taps the cover of the book with his hand. “A lot to apologize for, obviously.”   
  
She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You weren’t . . . in control.”   
  
“It was still me,” he says. And then, softer. “And if you believed that, it would feel different. When I tell you you’re beautiful.”   
  
She shakes her head again, firmer this time. “It’s not like--”   
  
“It’s exactly like that,” he says. And then he draws in a shaky breath and says, “I don’t even remember half of this.”   
  
“Because it wasn’t you.”   
  
There are his eyes on her, again. Searching. “I’ve always thought you were so pretty,” he says. “Before. After. During.”   
  
She swallows. Tries not to bristle. If she really believes what he’s saying, she reasons, she shouldn’t.   
  
“Particularly pretty,” he says again, but his eyes are filled with tears. “And I’m never --” he taps the notebook again. “I have to call Annie and apologize to her, too, for hitting on her a week after her wedding.”   
  
The girl lets her eyes fall to their joined hands.   
  
“And if you don’t want me to call you pretty, I can --” he swallows. “I can really, really try. But I can’t stop thinking about . . . It was me saying those things. Even though it wasn’t. And I can never--” he cuts himself off. “I’m sorry I pushed you.”   
  
“It’s fine,” she says.   
  
“Nothing about this is fine,” the boy says, those tears spilling over onto his cheeks, now. He wipes them away roughly with the back of his free hand. “I don’t know why you’d even want--”   
  
She tightens her grip on his hand, just enough to pull him back to her. “No more of that,” she says.   
  
They lay in bed together that morning. The boy didn’t attempt to sleep last night, but the girl tried. She always tries, and she never can without him. He smooths his hand over the curve of her neck, her shoulder, her back.   
  
“You’re pretty,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “You’re so pretty.”   
  
She hears what else he’s trying to say. _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry_.   
  
“Okay,” she manages.   
  
“Okay,” he echoes, his eyelids heavy. 

. . .   
  
For their date the following Sunday, the girl wears her favorite sweater and leaves her hair loose. She gets a jar of water for the dandelions he picked for her and doesn’t even bother pretending that he isn’t watching her.   
  
“You look beautiful,” he informs her. It’s a thought he’s echoed at least a dozen times in the past three days. Gentle, like he did before their nap. Soft, when she came out from a shower wrapped in a blue towel. Ardent, against her neck and throat and shoulder while he moved inside of her. Like a plea, like a promise.   
  
“So do you,” she says, because she still can’t work up a _thank you_.   
  
“Oh, I know,” he says, like things are easy. Like things can be easy. “I spent a really long time getting ready.”   
  
She laughs and slips her hand into his. “You should do that more often,” she teases. “You’re really not that bad when you comb your hair.”   
  
He puts on a starry eyed affectation, moving his shoulders and loking up at the sky like he’s overcome by the compliment. “Katniss Everdeen thinks I’m _not that bad_ ,” he echoes, moving his free hand to his heart.   
  
“When you comb your hair,” she maintains.   
  
“Too late,” the boy says. “I checked out after the compliment.”   
  
She can’t help her laugh. Like things can be good. “Take me out before I change my mind,” she says.   
  
“Of course,” he says. “Right this way, Beautiful.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I reuploaded this because it's one of a few fics I'm not gonna be able to convert into original fiction. As with mine and everyone else's work, this is subject to removal at any time. Please don't take this as an indication that many -- if any -- of my other fics will be returning, I'm just dipping my toes again.
> 
> Tumblr: mendontprotectyou


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